


Invictus

by goldfishtobleroneandamitie



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Angst, Discussion of Death, Gen, Grantaire is not in a healthy place right now, Implied Future Character Death, M/M, Romantic Jehan, barricade day 2013, but comfort too, combeferre & joly interaction, tw:blood, vivent les peuples
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-05
Updated: 2013-06-07
Packaged: 2017-12-14 01:23:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/831084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldfishtobleroneandamitie/pseuds/goldfishtobleroneandamitie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Barricade Day 2013. That first night, the Amis draw together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the fell clutch of circumstance

**Author's Note:**

> Out of the night that covers me,  
> Black as the Pit from pole to pole,  
> I thank whatever gods may be  
> For my unconquerable soul.
> 
> In the fell clutch of circumstance  
> I have not winced nor cried aloud.  
> Under the bludgeonings of chance  
> My head is bloody, but unbowed.
> 
> -"Invictus", William Earnest Henley

Joly knows he should not be cold; it is June in Paris, after all. Beyond that, he can  _feel_  the heat of the paving stones underneath him, even as the sky darkens and lamplight begins to glimmer from between boarded windows.

They’ve been boarded because those inside are afraid. Or so the National Guard would have them believe. Perhaps the closed shutters and boarded windows keep fear away, but Joly is outside in the street and despite the hot pavement he is cold. Perhaps all that fear has been shut out by old boards and tied shutters, left to pool thick and syrupy like blood between cobblestones, lapping at boots and whispering cowardice into men’s ears.

Inside the homes, shut up tight with no breeze, the heat must be stifling.

He straightens unconsciously, some ancient instinct keeping the icy poison out of his ears. They are far too sensitive for such things; he’s had two ear infections this month alone.

“Cigarette?”

Joly starts, for a moment losing control of the panic rising in his throat, but not fear of the barricade. He is a hypochondriac—a state of constant, though private, terror is his natural one. He covers it with cheer and fun, laughing loudest and smiling sunniest, while constantly silently begging to soak his hands in lye to burn away grub of poor Grantaire’s hands—no, the panic is coming back—

“Please,” he replies hastily.

Combeferre sits on the box Joly is leaning against, deemed not sturdy enough for the barricade but plenty for his weight, and busies his hands on his knee, pinching tobacco into paper and rolling a copy of the one dangling from his own mouth. After tapping it a few times, he proffers the cigarette, and his own to light it.

“My thanks.” He hands Combeferre’s cigarette back, and the guide simply nods and settles back against the wall of the Musain, letting a curl of smoke drift into the night air, to rise above the rooftops into the hot night. It’s oddly reminiscent of times spent at Necker, bits of relaxation among death and despair and fear.

Joly’s not sure what Combeferre wants. He does not begrudge the company, to be sure; Bossuet snores in a corner (he envies him, Joly thinks fondly, to be able to sleep so soundly even now) and all the others are sleeping, pretending to sleep, trying to sleep, or have given up on sleep and gathered in quietly-talking groups. So he appreciates Combeferre’s presence. But he would have expected him to stick close to Enjolras, especially on this of all nights. But the guide seems content without chief and center, so Joly does not question it.

The cigarette is warm on his lips as the smoke is in his lungs, and as Combeferre’s knee nudges his shoulder as the other man shifts, Joly begins to sweat in the sweltering June heat.

His sleeves are sticking to his arms and his waistcoat is oppressive, but the oily, icy fear begins to recede back the way it came, back under pavestones and between houses.

Joly is no longer cold.

* * *

Feuilly sits alone with his thoughts, cap pulled low over his eyes, which are themselves fixed on the plaster wall beside him. On it is a V-I-V, and half an E, surprisingly even for the canvas and brush—a rusty nail. The metallic scratch is oddly comforting to them all, a normal noise in this dark microcosm of existence.

It’s not the fine detail work he’s done on fans, not tiny flowers and hummingbirds that the other painters have marveled at, calling them ‘alive’. It is not the barest touch of paint on thin silk, folded over ribs of steel and wood. The nail rubs uncomfortably against patches of skin that have no calluses. Those are all on his fingertips, from years of holding brush with the lightest hold possible to paint wings and petals; or on his palms, from the heavy dockwork he does to make ends meet when the working-class has no need or money for fans. There is no padding from holding pencil or quill, not like Grantaire’s. As he scratches out the tail end of the E, the nail slides roughly over the skin of his fingers, the rust catching on the surprisingly smooth skin between knuckles. He is not deterred; he begins to scratch out the beginning of an N.

He lets out a begrudging smile at an errant thought; is it not ironic, he thinks, that his longest impact shall be that of the written word? He can feel the creeping death that mounts the barricade, and despite Enjolras’s brave speeches, Grantaire’s words have affected them all—perhaps more than they should. Blood will bathe the streets tomorrow, of that Feuilly has no doubt. The chances are good that some will be his.

Feuilly is no fool. He was a  _gamin_ like little Gavroche once, picking pockets to make ends meet before getting old enough to work at a factory. Enjolras speaks of the lasting impact that the barricades will have, that their names will live on in history as liberators. Feuilly believes it, believes that the names Enjolras and Combeferre and de Courfeyrac will go down as the revolution personified—perhaps even Bahorel, Prouvaire the poet with his records, or Grantaire the artist (he doesn’t think Feuilly has seen his sketches. He’s wrong).

But Feuilly cannot shake the feeling that his name will not. Enjolras has said his presence lends their movement legitimacy; perhaps it does. It does not change the fact that Feuilly is quiet, that he is here because he  _believes;_ but he is not one to instill that belief in others. Feuilly does not change the world; he helps other people do it. Feuilly has not written pamphlets dedicated to Patria; he reads what he can get his hands on, but his days are spent painting fans and slinging cargo, not writing or speaking or letting out the steady burn in his chest.

It is there, though; burning, burning, climbing up his chest to his throat and out through his arms, making his fingers itch in such a way that can only be soothed by scratch of metal against brick. It wails against the thought of not being remembered, of being only one of the masses who died for an ideal. He’s been one of the throng all his life, and has been largely content. But not tonight.

Tonight he leaves something behind that will outlast the barricade, the regime, most likely each and every one of them, etched deep into the wall of the café.

He sets down the nail with a satisfying  _chink,_ and the embers inside him purr appreciatively at his work.   
  
He runs hands dirty with plaster and gunpowder over the ridges and dips, letting out a dark smile at the words that will outlive them all. He tugs the cap lower over his eyes, settles next to the greatest art he’s ever created, and falls into sleep.

Against the dark background of the dirty brick, the words stand out stark and white:

_VIVENT LES PEUPLES!_

* * *

Grantaire stumbles into the Musain, past Feuilly absorbed in his scratching and Combeferre and Joly sprawled by the door. There’s no bottle in his hand, and it’s a pity, because he desperately needs it. He is feeling altogether too much right now, feeling the rawness and loneliness and hopelessness that absinthe has always drowned so effectively.

Apollo’s words will sometimes do the same thing, sweep him up for a fleeting moment in the beauty and strength of the words and passion if not the sentiment, leave him floating for the briefest bit of time in red-and-gold light instead of the inky darkness that consumes him, the darkness of the nothing that surrounds the world—working through cracks and between cobbles and under the door that hasn’t latched behind him.

Those golden moments are few and far between, though, so most of the time he makes do with alcohol and cynicism.

Because if nothing means anything, why should the prospect of losing it hurt so much?

So Grantaire is tipsy, upset, lacking more alcohol, and having a philosophical crisis, in the middle of the night behind a barricade built of rough furniture and dreams.

This is not a good place to be. Yet he cannot leave.

He cannot leave despite the fact that he  _knows,_ beyond his cynicism and bitterness, that this venture, tonight, is  _hopeless._ Grantaire is a drunkard, not stupid; his sweeps of the city under Enjolras’s direction have led to tentative smiles and a smoky, timid flame, not the inferno that burns within Enjolras and that would need to fill all of Paris before they had a _prayer_  of surviving this. He says “they”, because there is no way in God’s sweet heaven that anyone can leave now.

Even after his parting blow at Enjolras, the accusation that his life, his cause, is a cosmic lie to give him purpose—he cannot leave his god any more than a moss can retreat from the sun. It can try to cling to its dark, murky place, stay crouched in the cold water and in the shade, but it must creep out eventually because without the sun, the moss will die. The sun can burn it to a crisp, desiccate it until there is nothing left, but life itself is not possible without the Sun.

So is Grantaire’s life not possible without Enjolras.

(He really needs a drink).

He roots for the nearest bottle with something still in it, receptacles strewn across the floor from when the table underneath them was dragged out to form a critical support for the wall outside.

The third one he touches sloshes promisingly, so he leans back on his knees and takes a swig. Wine. It’ll do.

He settles back against the wall, unwittingly mirroring Feuilly outside as he falls asleep, and proceeds to silently, methodically drown himself. Perhaps it will get him through the day without the Sun.

After that…well, Grantaire never expected to live past thirty, anyway.

Because Enjolras is going to die. It’s inevitable; he has been the leader of this cause from the beginning, dragging each of them from the depths of Paris’s apathy and binding them together. He is their Jeanne d’Arc. And as the Maid of Orleans did, Apollo is going to go up in flames. He will be the eternal symbol of their cause, a better martyr than Lamarque himself.

If anything changes after this night, it will not be because of the barricade; it will be the result of Enjolras.

That gets far too close to thoughts of the Sun, so Grantaire drinks again.

“Grantaire!”

Speak of the devil, here comes the god now. Earlier, the man had looked the part of an avenging angel, golden hair flying and red flag raised high, wrapping around him so he was all red vest and gold hair and black breeches; a painting for the ages, if Grantaire had not been so focused on the explosions and burnt-powder smell all around him. No matter. He could reproduce it from memory even now. Every time he’s seen Enjolras, every movement poetry and every stillness a painting, is burned into his memory, edged with a golden corona.

“Apollo,” he croaks. “Have you come to earth to bless this mere mortal?” He raises his bottle. “Drink with me, to days gone by.” His lip twists at the repetition, the mockery of Combeferre’s and Jehan’s honest words of camaraderie and hope, and he feels his heart break. He can’t have that; he drinks again.

“Grantaire,” the other man sighs. Enjolras drops to his knees beside him, carefully nudging aside glass and ceramic, and sits cross-legged next to him. He looks as little like a god now as he ever can; his hair is flattened with sweat, his eyes tired, his hands and cheeks streaked with powder and dust. There is a long scratch up his arm, but the rest of him is miraculously untouched. The evidence piles up that Enjolras is not of this world.

The exhaustion that permeates him is surprising enough, however, that Grantaire allows the bottle to be taken from him. “What do you want, Enjolras?” The tiredness of his own voice surprises even himself. Cynicism is a form of bravado in itself, and his mask of cynicism is not something he’s ever let down in the Musain.

Enjolras, for once, says nothing. He merely reaches forward with one hand, setting the bottle behind him with the other.

Grantaire starts as soon as Enjolras’s hand connects with his shoulder, fingers digging in a way that should be painful but instead is just  _real_ and it cuts through the haze of the wine and exhaustion. Grantaire is lost to his golden god, again.

He’d yanked away from Enjolras’s touch earlier that night for exactly this reason. He has known, from the beginning, that he cannot resist the revolutionary next to him; his passion is the only thing capable of lifting him out of darkness. But the darkness is what Grantaire knows, what he can predict and survive. He can do none of that with the light that Enjolras brings. It  _hurts,_ it burns and cuts through the oily, insidious darkness with the fire of passion and patria. The Sun overcomes the night, and the moss crawls out of its hole to soak up the warmth, consequences be damned.

So when he meets Enjolras’s eyes, the taller man’s gaze burning into his own, he does not even bother to speak. Nothing else can be said—they know where the other stands. Their fates are decided in that moment, with Enjolras leading Grantaire into fire.

They sleep fitfully together, propped against the wall of the wine shop. Grantaire’s face is pressed into Enjolras’s shirt; this is as to Heaven as a man such as he can hope for.

As Enjolras’s hand settles uncertainly into his hair, he lets himself believe that the feeling is mutual.

He wakes when Enjolras begins to move the next morning, in the dim gray light before dawn. The other man does not shake him awake, so he pretends not to notice, sprawling onto the floor. As Enjolras walks out the door, the darkness returns with a vengeance, whispering rejection and hopelessness as it slides under plaster and between floorboards. _He did not wake you; he does not want you there._

Grantaire reaches for the bottle abandoned the night before, and drinks.


	2. master of my fate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is fear, comfort, and acceptance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Beyond this place of wrath and tears  
> Looms but the Horror of the shade,  
> And yet the menace of the years  
> Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
> 
> It matters not how strait the gate,  
> How charged with punishments the scroll.  
> I am the master of my fate:  
> I am the captain of my soul."
> 
> -"Invictus", William Earnest Henley

Jean Prouvaire is exhausted, but he cannot sleep. Not tonight. Tonight the air is clogged with sweat and smoke, the noises of the city punctuated with the _scritch_ of metal on plaster and the metallic _zing_ of bayonets being sharpened. Smoke from pipes on both sides of the barricade curl and intertwine above it, and he watches the strands combine into an indifferentiable column. His fingers take hold of an imaginary pen, tracing words onto the box on which he sits.

_We are not so different, you and I._

The men are quiet. Enjolras has finally followed Grantaire into the Musain, and even the quiet conversations amongst the defenders have finally dwindled as men pull coats or hats over their eyes, grasping for any bit of fitful rest they can before the dawn. Because the dawn brings with it smoke and noise and blood, but also—hopefully—triumph.

Jehan is a Romantic; he can appreciate the sacrifice necessary to achieve this new world better than perhaps Enjolras or Combeferre can. All good things must have obverses. As darkness is necessary for dawn, so is loss necessary for victory. He’s known that since he first began to read and write; the best poetry is that where hope is leavened by despair in equal measure, and how can life not be the same? The others are beginning to realize it now, he thinks, after losing Marius’s little street waif. Her death was surprising, shocking even, a musket ball through the hand but the worst hidden by an overcoat. Her blood is dried on the cobblestones, drops baptizing the barricade—a blessing of chaos and destruction.

Jean Prouvaire can appreciate the beauty in death, and the worthiness of the cause. He mourns the girl’s death, but not its impact—in her death she has contributed more powerfully than a queen could in life. This little girl’s blood is the final call to arms for them all; she is a rallying cry, a symbol of what they fight for. Her name will be borne aloft in the morning, elevated along with _Patria_ and _Freedom_ and _Liberty._ Jehan hopes his legacy will be half so beautiful.

He is started from his reverie by a soft sniff. He turns, brushing hair from his eyes, to see Courfeyrac sitting alone between a broken piano and a wardrobe. His back is pressed against a long beam, and there’s little room to move. His face is shining from the heat, and from something else.

“Courf.” The poet stands and moves towards the center, folding his legs gracefully underneath him as he sits across from his friend. “What’s wrong?”

He knows. Jehan can appreciate the beauty in the death that will come tomorrow. Courfeyrac cannot. Courfeyrac is filled with such a zest for life that death is abhorrent, no matter how honorable. Not his own death; Courfeyrac is brave, and will follow Enjolras bravely into the dark as he has into the light. No, he mourns for the little girl who had uttered a little w _huff_ of surprise at her own blood. He mourns preemptively for his best friends, Enjolras atop the barricade, inviting the Guard’s bullets; Combeferre on his right, smoke clouding his glasses but holding fast nonetheless. Courfeyrac is afraid, but not for himself. The death he has seen today has brought up visions of others, and a man who loves so well, who wears his heart on his sleeve as Courfeyrac does, can do nothing else but weep.

“Jehan. It is nothing, you see? I am acting like a babe,” he says bravely. Because he _is brave._

Their center straightens, rubbing a sleeve across his face. It doesn’t help; the sleeve was beyond hope with rust and dirt, and so it does no more than smudge the sweat-and tear-streaked face. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows tears, and his short queue lists sadly to one side. It’s an odd picture, Courfeyrac the dandy so disheveled, and that is the picture that hurts Jehan, more than death could. It looks like Courfeyrac has given up, though the poet _knows_ he has not, that he never will.

The image itself is frightening, so Jehan reaches forwards and straightens Courfeyrac’s cravat, offering him a kerchief as he does. The other man shoots him a grateful look, wiping his face truly clean this time, and looks mildly at a loss for where to put the soiled linen before tucking it into his waistcoat. Even this small change is a boon; the small grin he flashes Jehan, out from under long lashes that have brought many men and women to their knees, is a larger one.

“Not a babe,” the poet says softly. “A man. Fear is not to be shamed, especially not now.”

The smile grows as he continues. “You are a brave man, for your fear does not control you. You are here, are you not? You stand with us.”

“Always,” whispers Courfeyrac. He casts his gaze to the wine-shop door, Combeferre next to it and Enjolras inside. “Always.”

Jehan slides down the wardrobe to nestle against Courfeyrac, and holds out his hand. The center clutches it, fingernails turning white as the blood drains from them. No matter. There will be blood enough tomorrow. The barricade is yawning; her first taste has whetted her appetite.

But for now, Jehan the Romantic is instead Jehan the poet, whispering Keats and Byron and victory into Courfeyrac’s ear as a single tear traces down, again, through the smudged dust of his face. Courfeyrac falls into exhausted sleep against Jehan’s leg, Jehan’s nose brushing his hair. The world is silent once again.

* * *

 

Atop the barricade is the best view in the city, Bahorel thinks; not too high to make out individual faces, but high enough to feel disconnected to the world. A place to be with friends and yet completely alone with one’s thoughts.

He’s supposed to be keeping watch, and he is, but the Guard is as exhausted as they are and similarly splayed out, leaning on boxes and each other in fitful sleep. But for the setting, no one would believe the same  men had been squalling bloody murder a scant few hours before.

He lets out a fierce grin. He’s been roaring right back at them. Combeferre can have the careful planning and Enjolras the fiery speeches, but this is what _he_ lives for, the sharp flares of musket shot and flesh under his fists. His knuckles ache comfortably from the day’s work, and he begins to take inventory of his scars.

Powder-burns on his fingertips, fresh and pink, from Notre Dame’s old pistols. A thick layer of tiny whitish scars from years of brawling. Raw spots and more burns from the guns, and a thick scar along one palm from a hot spit as a child.

On his forearms, where his sleeves are rolled up, bruises old and new from blocking punches. Along the top of one, a fresh cut, the most serious of the day. It runs the length of his right forearm, now bound with the cleanest cloth Joly had to hand. It had gaped before, red and sucking, and Bahorel had roared—not his usual terribly joyous battle cry, but the snarl of a wounded animal.

Joly has wrapped it tight and well, but a few brown spots have come through. They are accented by dust and black patches from still more burns. The doctors appear asleep anyway, Joly’s head lolling onto Combeferre’s knee and a cigarette dangling from two fingers, the smoke curling upward. He will ask Combeferre to re-wrap it tomorrow if there is time.

The wound twinges slightly as if in agreement, and Bahorel hisses.

He moves up to shoulders constantly sore from wear, and more so today. Feuilly complains of cramping in his wrists and fingers from use; Bahorel will only be glared at if he empathizes, but he _does,_ with cracks and pops in his joints that he knows are incongruous in a man of his age. He cannot help it; fighting is what makes him feel most alive, even if every broken bone makes movement harder and his fingers find it more difficult each day to wrap around a pen.

His veins had thrummed with life today, thrummed with revolutionary passion that their leader instills in him like no other, coupled with the berserker glee of skin, muscle and bone under his clenched fingers.

He’s never been ashamed of what makes him happy, and has never been afraid to show it. He frightens many, with his dangerous grins and scars—half the time with a black eye from kickboxing with Grantaire or a bloody lip from a bar brawl. He is the sort that children hide from at first sight, that men eye askance as they gather their families to them.

He admires the men along the barricade, for they have never feared him. Not Grantaire, who had put a disgruntled sailor with a tiny knife out before he could get near Bahorel; not Feuilly, who curses him when they mock-wrestle, always with a smile on his face; not Combeferre, the only man he’s met who’s taller than he is, and who uses the height to his full advantage; not Jehan, who looks so breakable but whom Bahorel saw with a terrifying smile in the fighting of the afternoon. These men have accepted him entirely as he is. He likes to think he’s returned the favor a hundred times over, getting them out of (and into, he’ll admit) scrapes, leading them to the good alcohol, extending the the web of revolution throughout the city. He likes to think his slate is clean.

He does not know what will come tomorrow, though he can feel a familiar itch along his limbs—the itch to move, to fight, to _scream._ He believes he is ready. Perhaps he will die; if he does, he cannot imagine a better place to do it. His body is tired, but it has more than enough for a last stand—a last stand protecting the men he’s called brothers.

Today is as good a day to die as any other, he thinks, with another glance over the men on the ground. The sky is lightening, the mist rising from the streets, and the oppressive wet warmth begins to burn away, replaced with a shocking burn. Enjolras emerges from the Musain, face set. As he does, Combeferre and Joly start awake, and Courfeyrac pokes his head out from between furniture, followed by Jehan. Feuilly is still asleep, next to his revolutionary scrawl.

Bahorel crawls down the barricade and crosses to him in three long strides, shaking him awake. “It’s time.”

The workingman pulls off his cap as the first rays of sunlight hit his face. “Let’s go.”

As he helps the smaller man to his feet, the sentiment is reinforced:

Today is a good day to die. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoyed this, please feel free to find me on tumblr--I have the same username there as here, goldfishtobleroneandamitie :) I'd love to talk to anyone who loves liberty and these beautiful, beautiful characters.


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